Why are crowd levels so off this week?

[finnster77]

So the wait times I see on the Disney app for today (ex: as of 21:01 p.m. Dumbo has a 35 minute wait) are fairly accurate and reflect today's unexpected crowd level of 10? So would it stand to reason that a true level 7 or 5 day would show much shorter wait times?

Where are you getting your info that yesterday was a "10"?
Who's crowd calendar are you using? It's all relative. Touring Plans and Josh mean different things when assigning a number to a crowd level. Same for UT. It's a very inexact science.
One thing that I have found suspicious though, on Touring Plans site, they have a feature called "how I did yesterday." It shows the wait times they predicted versus what actually happened. That feature has been unavailable this week........

 

[finnster77]

The last couple of weeks have been 10 certainly not 5-7s.

This past week? What are you basing this on?
A "10" would be in the top 10% of attendance compared to other days throughout the year. (including Christmas, 4th of July, Easter, etc.)
Do you really think that this week fits that description?

 

[PrincessWithABlaster]

Where are you getting your info that yesterday was a "10"?
Who's crowd calendar are you using? It's all relative. Touring Plans and Josh mean different things when assigning a number to a crowd level. Same for UT. It's a very inexact science.
One thing that I have found suspicious though, on Touring Plans site, they have a feature called "how I did yesterday." It shows the wait times they predicted versus what actually happened. That feature has been unavailable this week........

I'm seeing 'How Did We Do,' for yesterday. It shows yesterday TP predicted 4-6 in the various parks and they were 8-10. Quite a bit off. But if Disney truly wasn't expecting it (and they have the best data available to them) it's not surprising that the crowd calendars got it wrong too.

 

[Minniesgal]

This past week? What are you basing this on?
A "10" would be in the top 10% of attendance compared to other days throughout the year. (including Christmas, 4th of July, Easter, etc.)
Do you really think that this week fits that description?

Absolutely as did the CMs I discussed attendance with in the MK

This week this year is no different to Easter week this year in the MK

 

[finnster77]

Absolutely as did the CMs I discussed attendance with in the MK

This week this year is no different to Easter week this year in the MK

Wow.
I'm seeing on TP that they predicted a 6 and observed a 10 yesterday as well. Unbelievable.

 

[dachsie]

I don't understand the fear about the crowd levels. Sure when its super crowded, you may not be able to do everything and you may wait a little longer, but I never go to WDW expecting to see everything. That's why I keep coming back. If the crowd level is a 5 or a 10, I will just deal with what is there. I am certainly not going to stress over it.

 

[njmousefest]

It's always crowded at disney. Go expecting a 10 and you won't be disappointed.

 

[MammaMoe48]

Where are you getting your info that yesterday was a "10"?
Who's crowd calendar are you using? It's all relative. Touring Plans and Josh mean different things when assigning a number to a crowd level. Same for UT. It's a very inexact science.
One thing that I have found suspicious though, on Touring Plans site, they have a feature called "how I did yesterday." It shows the wait times they predicted versus what actually happened. That feature has been unavailable this week........

I don't know the levels, I was guessing that if the day was supposed to be a 7 but the crowds are much bigger than usual, it's probably closer to 10. In previous weeks the days that were given a 7 had 5-10 minute waits on the less popular rides but yesterday on a day that was supposed to be a 7 had 20-30 minutes for those same rides. I'm just trying to figure out if the Disney app has accurate wait times regardless of the crowd levels on any given day.

 

[finnster77]

I don't know the levels, I was guessing that if the day was supposed to be a 7 but the crowds are much bigger than usual, it's probably closer to 10. In previous weeks the days that were given a 7 had 5-10 minute waits on the less popular rides but yesterday on a day that was supposed to be a 7 had 20-30 minutes for those same rides. I'm just trying to figure out if the Disney app has accurate wait times regardless of the crowd levels on any given day.

Gotcha.
Apparently, this is a bad week to evaluate the crowd calendars. They're way off.
I blame it on the early Easter. Many school districts who build their spring breaks around Easter decided to wait until April to break.
I guess Disney and the people who design the crowd calendars didn't anticipate that.

 

[finnster77]

I don't understand the fear about the crowd levels. Sure when its super crowded, you may not be able to do everything and you may wait a little longer, but I never go to WDW expecting to see everything. That's why I keep coming back. If the crowd level is a 5 or a 10, I will just deal with what is there. I am certainly not going to stress over it.

Not sure I'd call it fear, but many folks plan their dates around the largest crowd predictions of the year, so it's naturally disappointing when they hear of gridlock on the walkways, no SDFP's of value, and waits twice as long as expected.

 

[TXStormtrooper]

Tangent alert: Has the idiom changed? I interpret "crowd levels so off" as meaning either they're lower than expected (as in fallen off) or they don't match the crowd calendar predictions (as in off target). Neither seems to be what people are reporting here.

But the latter is exactly what's being reported. The crowd calendars predicted a lower number than what ended up happening. That has been confirmed by both Josh and TP.

 

[GaryDis]

But the latter is exactly what's being reported. The crowd calendars predicted a lower number than what ended up happening. That has been confirmed by both Josh and TP.

If you look at the posts prior to mine, only a handful out of over 40 even mentioned crowd calendars. It seems like everyone else had the mind-reading gene I'm missing.

The posts after mine made it much clearer that people were talking about the crowd calendar predictions.

 

[tstidm1]

I wonder if this may be part of a couple of things. This is partly due to the actual attendance at the parks, which means more people. I also wonder if they are running the full capacity of all attractions. Josh from Easywdw mentioned a couple of weeks ago (Before the Peak of Spring Break) that they were only running one side of Killamajaro Safaris. This is Spring Break still and they have been making cut backs. I'm thinking they've cut capacity at some attractions to.

 

[Minniesgal]

At 10 am yesterday Peter Pans wait time was an hour and 40 minutes, no way is that anywhere near a 7

 

[lugnut33]

I wonder if this may be part of a couple of things. This is partly due to the actual attendance at the parks, which means more people. I also wonder if they are running the full capacity of all attractions. Josh from Easywdw mentioned a couple of weeks ago (Before the Peak of Spring Break) that they were only running one side of Killamajaro Safaris. This is Spring Break still and they have been making cut backs. I'm thinking they've cut capacity at some attractions to.

What he mentioned about KS is that they are not operating both sides of the line until later in the morning, thus causing the line to build rapidly and then be very long all day.

 

[Maliboo]

I wonder if this may be part of a couple of things. This is partly due to the actual attendance at the parks, which means more people. I also wonder if they are running the full capacity of all attractions. Josh from Easywdw mentioned a couple of weeks ago (Before the Peak of Spring Break) that they were only running one side of Killamajaro Safaris. This is Spring Break still and they have been making cut backs. I'm thinking they've cut capacity at some attractions to.

They can't run attractions at capacity if they've cut staff.

 

[GaryDis]

What he mentioned about KS is that they are not operating both sides of the line until later in the morning, thus causing the line to build rapidly and then be very long all day.

KS is a single track. I get that operating both lines allows for increased loading/unloading capacity, and smooths out delays due to individuals needing extra time. I'm curious about the relative impact of operating just one side of a dual-loading, single track ride (PotC is another that comes to mind) versus a real two-track ride such as SpaceMtn. That's more of a queuing theory question, but perhaps someone here has some links to explanations.

 

[::Snow_White::]

A lot of UK families are here for 2-3 weeks and then everyone from Georgia is here this week for their Spring Break. Will pretty much be ongoing until mid/end of April. Yesterday at DHS TOT was 120 and RnR was about 75 I think. Crowd-wise it doesn't feel too bad, but the lines are pretty bad.

 

[mickeyfanachey1999]

Yes our spring break is next week as well and we are headed down Saturday. Despite the predictions, I expect it to be quite crowded. There at least 5 families just from our neighborhood who are going!

We are leaving Saturday and expect it to be crowded...but we know we'll have a great time regardless.

 

[MermaidMommy]

I wonder if this may be part of a couple of things. This is partly due to the actual attendance at the parks, which means more people. I also wonder if they are running the full capacity of all attractions. Josh from Easywdw mentioned a couple of weeks ago (Before the Peak of Spring Break) that they were only running one side of Killamajaro Safaris. This is Spring Break still and they have been making cut backs. I'm thinking they've cut capacity at some attractions to.

Josh also reported yesterday that they were only running one side of Primeval Whirl, which had a 40 minute wait. I've also seen various reports of them only running one side of Dumbo all week. Higher than expected crowds coupled with capacity cuts would make for a long wait times.